Předkládaná diplomová práce se soustřeďuje na proměny anglické zahraniční politiky od obnovení stuartovské monarchie roku 1660 do roku 1678. Zmíněné období je sledováno zejména krále Karla II. a jeho okolí dílčí zájem se soustředí na recepci jednotlivých kroků ze strany dalších domácích i zahraničních aktérů. Důraz je kladen hlavně na proměny vzájemných vztahů Francií a Nizozemím, pozornosti se těší též vztahy s Dánskem, Portugalskem, Španělskem a Švédskem, stejně jako pohled anglických politických elit. Anglická diplomacie je v této práci pojímána v kontextu vývoje anglické domácí politiky a s přihlédnutím k dění v ostatních evropských zemích. V omezené míře je nastíněn také hospodářský, konfesní a mezinárodněprávní rámec, ve kterém se anglická diplomacie zmíněných let pohybovala.

The 1980s witnessed a judicial “rights revolution” in Canada characterized by the Supreme Court of Canada striking down both federal and provincial legislation which violated the rights guaranteed by the 1982 Charter of Rights. The lack of a similar judicial “rights revolution” in the wake of the 1960 Canadian Bill of Rights has largely been attributed to the structural difference between the two instruments with the latter – as a “mere” statute of the federal parliament – providing little more than a canon of construction and (unlike the Charter) not empowering the courts to engage in judicial review of legislation. Yet this view contrasts starkly with how the Bill was portrayed by the Diefenbaker government, which argued that it provided for judicial review and would “prevail” over other federal legislation. Many modern scholars have dismissed the idea that the Bill could prevail over other federal statutes as being incompatible with the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. That is, a bill of rights could only prevail over legislation if incorporated into the British North America Act. As such, they argue that the Diefenbaker government could not have intended the Bill of Rights to operate as anything more than a canon of construction. However, such a view ignores the turbulence in constitutional thinking on parliamentary sovereignty in the 1930s through 1960s provoked by the Statute of Westminster. This era produced the doctrine of “self-embracing” sovereignty – in contrast to traditional “Dicey” sovereignty – where parliament could limit itself through “ordinary” legislation. The effective author of the Canadian Bill of Rights, Elmer Driedger, was an adherent of this doctrine as well as an advocate of a “purposive” approach to statutory interpretation. Driedger, thus, drafted the Bill based upon the doctrine of self-embracing sovereignty and believed it would enjoy a “purposive” interpretation by the courts, with the Bill designed to be as effective at guaranteeing rights as the Statute of Westminster was at liberating Canada from Imperial legislation.

This thesis is focused on the analysis of constitutional relations between the mother country and its Dominions. The constitutional problems along with foreign and economic policy formed one of the most significant and interesting chapters in British imperial history. The thesis analysed the formation of the first Dominions, the question of the constitutional position of the Dominions, a gradual change of the then used imperial terminology (the term British Empire vs. the term Commonwealth), and a working of system of Colonial (Imperial) Conferences in connection with the significance of the second influential imperial institution - the Imperial Defence Committee. The thesis deals with establishment of the Imperial War Cabinet, and organising the Imperial War Conference. A constitutional resolution was adopted that once and for all rejected the vision of the federalisation of the Empire and launched post-war discussions on the modification of constitutional relations between individual autonomous countries of the Commonwealth, which culminated during the Imperial Conference of 1921. The circumstances and discussions that accompanied the Chanak Incident, the Lausanne Conference, the British- Japanese alliance, the Imperial Conference of 1923, the Geneva Protocol and the Locarno Pact, all were...

Diplomová práce Politicko-geografické aspekty transformace Britského impéria na Společenství národů Abstract The masterʼs degree thesis "From British Empire to Commonwealth of Nations: Political and Geographical Aspects of the Transformation" deals with gradual transformation of the British Empire, one of the biggest colonial empires of all time, into Commonwealth of Nations, i. e. into a loose association of the United Kingdom and its former Dominions and colonies. The masterʼs degree thesis aims to profoundly analyze all the substantial aspects of this complicated process, namely in broader (above all in political-geographical, historical and legal) relations. The initial historical chapter describes the origins and the following territorial expansion of the British Empire. The second chapter concentrates on different types of administrative units that existed within the British Empire; a special emphasis is given to Dominions whose creation marked the beginning of the disintegrative tendencies within the Empire. The third part of the thesis examines the key period of the transformation of the British Empire into a looser association of states, which means the events of the first half of the twentieth century, when couple of crucial documents amending the character of the British Empire were adopted. The...

The thesis in question is titled “Readjusting Orthodoxy”. It constitutes a discourse in UK constitutional law although legal theoretic, historical, politicial, philosophical, and EU-related complementary themes are also present. It is founded upon, and driven by, two fundamental, inter-related premises. First, that it is the orthodox reading of the UK Constitution which best describes and explains the present constitutional arrangement: the UK Parliament is a sovereign institution sitting at the apex of the UK Constitution and vested with the right to make and unmake any law whatsoever. In the second place, that, notwithstanding the above, this very reading of the UK Constitution is currently deficient in terms of internal cohesion, is plagued by ingrained anachronistic dogmas and enjoys only a limited adaptability. From these premises emerges a third proposition; namely, that the UK constitutional discourse as a whole would stand to lose greatly should alternative constitutional theories that are less suited to describe and explain the current constitutional arrangement replace the orthodox reading of the Constitution by exploiting these conspicuous drawbacks. Thus, the present treatise argues that the orthodox reading should after critical evaluation be readjusted in the various ways to be proposed so as to be rendered coherent, consistent, impervious to the numerous challenges it currently faces and, ultimately, capable of continuing to offer the canonical account of the ever-changing UK Constitution.

This thesis examines the life and works of the English Calvinist clergyman Daniel Featley (1582-1645) through the lens of various printed and manuscript sources, especially his manuscript notebooks in Oxford. It links his story and thought to the broader themes of early Stuart religious, political, and intellectual history. Chapter one analyses the first thirty- five years of Featley’s life, exploring how many of the features that underpin the major themes of Featley’s career—and which reemerged throughout his life—were formed and nurtured during Featley’s early years in Oxford, Paris, and Cornwall. There he emerges as an ambitious young divine in pursuit of preferment; a shrewd minister, who attempted to position himself within the ecclesiastical spectrum; and a budding polemicist, whose polemical exchanges were motivated by a pastoral desire to protect the English Church. Chapter two examines Featley’s role as an ecclesiastical licenser and chaplain to Archbishop George Abbot in the 1610s and 1620s. It offers a reinterpretation of the view that Featley was a benign censor, explores how pastoral sensitivities influenced his censorship, and analyses the parallels between Featley’s licensing and his broader ecclesiastical aims. Moreover, by exploring how our historiographical understandings of licensing and censorship have been clouded by Featley’s attempts to conceal that an increasingly influential anti- Calvinist movement was seizing control of the licensing system and marginalizing Calvinist licensers in the 1620s, this chapter (along with chapter 7) addresses the broader methodological issues of how to weigh and evaluate various vantage points. Chapters three and four analyse the publications resulting from Featley’s debates with prominent Catholic and anti-Calvinist leaders. These chapters examine Featley’s use of patristic tradition in these disputes, the pastoral motivations that underpinned his polemical exchanges, and how Featley strategically issued these polemical publications to counter Catholicism and anti-Calvinism and to promulgate his own alternative version of orthodoxy at several crucial political moments during the 1620s and 1630s. Chapter five focuses on how, in the 1620s and 1630s, the themes of prayer and preaching in his devotional work, Ancilla Pietatis, and collection of seventy sermons, Clavis Mystica, were complementary rather than contradictory. It also builds on several of the major themes of the thesis by examining how pastoral and polemical motivations were at the heart of these works, how Featley continued to be an active opponent—rather than a passive bystander and victim—of Laudianism, and how he positioned himself politically to avoid being reprimanded by an increasingly hostile Laudian regime. Chapter six explores the theme of ‘moderation’ in the events of the 1640s surrounding Featley’s participation at the Westminster Assembly and his debates with separatists. It focuses on how Featley’s pursuit of the middle way was both: a self-protective ‘chameleon- like’ survival instinct—a rudder he used to navigate his way through the shifting political and ecclesiastical terrain of this period—and the very means by which he moderated and manipulated two polarized groups (decidedly convictional Parliamentarians and royalists) in order to reoccupy the middle ground, even while it was eroding away. Finally, chapter seven examines Featley’s ‘afterlife’ by analysing the reception of Featley through the lens of his post-1660 biographers and how these authors, particularly Featley’s nephew, John Featley, depicted him retrospectively in their biographical accounts in the service of their own post-restoration agendas. By analysing how Featley’s own ‘chameleon-like’ tendencies contributed to his later biographers’ distorted perception of him, this final chapter returns to the major methodological issues this thesis seeks to address. In short, by exploring the various roles he played in the early Stuart English Church and seeking to build on and contribute to recent historiographical research, this study sheds light on the links between a minister’s pastoral sensitivities and polemical engagements, and how ministers pursued preferment and ecclesiastically positioned themselves, their opponents, and their biographical subjects through print.